Voting rights and Dr. King. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Here comes states rights again.

As long as Black people are denied equal access to the vote, we fight for voting rights to defend everyone’s right to vote.

That’s why Dr. King demanded federal protection and expansion of voting rights. He saw how states’ rights was a weapon against open and free elections.

The 1965 federal law outlawed the discriminatory voting practices of southern states that went all the way back to the overthrow of Reconstruction following the Civil War.

The law was passed to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution. The law was signed 95 years after the amendment was ratified.

The Republicans and the two Senate Democrats who are now blocking federal election protection and expansion are using the same arguments that southern segregationists used against Dr. King and our Movement in 1965.

It’s the old “states’ rights” defense.

Our founding fathers, their argument goes, didn’t want federal intervention over elections. It was a process they reserved for the most part to the states. As a result many states limited access to the polls to groups of people because of who they were.

Of course, we shouldn’t forget that it is also true that our founding white men wanted slavery and limited rights for women.

Recently the opponents of expanded voting rights and open access have come up with a Twitterized talking point: New York has more restrictive voting rights than Georgia.

While New York does not the kind of expansive voting rights that Illinois has, and that is nothing for them to be happy about, Politifact addresses this horse shit.

“Whatever affects one, affects all indirectly,” Dr. King said.

The attempt to restrict voting rights for Black people affects many others.

I’m thinking about those with physical disability or old folks like me.

And I’m thinking about Texas.

Disabled, elderly and non-English speaking voters will lose rights under Texas' new voting law passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature earlier this year.

Signed by Republican Governor Abbott in September, the legislation tightened the state's election laws, with a host of changes including a ban on drive-thru voting and new rules for voting by mail.

While Democrats and voting rights groups have attacked the law as a Republican move to suppress turnout in Texas cities, primarily the votes of Black and Brown voters, the Justice Department has also gone after two provisions which it says violate the federal Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

One places strict limits on how much assistance can be given to voters who, because of disabilities or limited English proficiency, may need help navigating the voting process.

The second places new constraints on how people who vote by mail verify their identities.

Texas wants to add those with disabilities and the elderly to the list of those they will restrict access to the ballot.

They claim it as a state right.

I’m also thinking about how it was just a few election cycles ago that both parties were hysterical about pointing the finger at foreign countries for interference in U.S. elections.

And now it turns out that it is states like Texas and Georgia and the Republican Party that are doing the most to interfere with free and open elections.